Herald Guided Review: Is Thanos Rising the Worst Thanos Comic of All Time?

This may seem over-dramatic, but Marvel Now! has a serious, festering, irredeemable dud on their hands with the first two issues of Thanos Rising.

Is this series the worst Thanos comic the universe has known? I haven’t read every Thanos story ever told, but I’m leaning towards a resounding YES.

For those who don’t know Thanos, he’s a perpetual top 3 all-time Marvel villain, ranking somewhere in the vicinity of Dr. Doom and Magneto depending on your preference and mood and feelings about Loki.

Given this, it’s been nothing but exciting to see Thanos promised as a major player at the end of The Avengers, and to see Marvel gearing their own comics towards a Thanos-driven Infinity event later this year.

The year of Thanos was supposed to kick off with Jason Aaron and Simone Bianchi’s Thanos Rising. The first issue cover features a vicious looking Thanos with either alien blood on his face, or a serious Apple-tini drinking problem.

It looks like a comic featuring the Marvel U’s most interesting villain, written by the gritty, tough-as-nails, critically acclaimed writer behind Wolverine, Punisher Max, & Scalped.

Let’s take a moment to pause here and reflect on the apparent point of Thanos’s ape dissection.

With each incision, each sever and slice, his hands do the asking. Who am I and why am I here?

Great. So Thanos Rising is helping us understand what it was like for Thanos – the nearly all-powerful god-like entity who at one point wiped out half the Marvel Universe, and at one point ALL OF EXISTENCE – to find himself. It wasn’t bad enough that we had to see him as a dweeby kid, now we have to picture Thanos wandering around like a deleted scene from Mulan?

A Thanos Story That Didn’t Need to Be Told

Honestly, aside from the dulling boredom of the story-telling here, the bigger problems can basically be summed up in two points:

Inflicting Thanos with a human origin is a desecration of the character.

This origin just never needed to be told.

Aaron and Bianchi’s decision to tell the Thanos origin like he’s a common serial killer from our planet is completely perplexing. As I’ve already basically alluded to, readers and comic fans have seen a lot of bad guys over the years, and we know the tropes and cliches that affect each.

Why would this be the chosen approach for Thanos, a cosmic force, the only villain to surpass Dr. Doom in both achievement and ambition?

I think there is a place for deranged killer stories. Just look at Dexter. There are masterful versions of a comic detailing a shattered mind with no regard for human life. We don’t really need to reach beyond Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hellto prove this.

I could even see this darker story-telling working in the Marvel Universe with another character. For example, Mr. Sinister. Here we have a deranged human. He can have human problems. Fine.

But Thanos? The Mad Titan? He doesn’t need to have human problems! That’s what makes him so cool!

Except for maybe unrequited love with maybe Lady Death. This I can deal with.

In a lot of ways, this inherently flawed approach to the character highlights one of Marvel’s fatal flaws: the insistence to give an origin to everything.

I mean I get it. I get why this sounded like a comic worth making, and I’m guessing “Thanos Origins” sells a lot better than “Hey we’re gonna try some more cool Thanos in space stories without Jim Starlin, is that cool guys?”

So while acknowledging that this is a losing battle so long as comic fans continue buying origin stories (and don’t get me wrong, I grew up idolizing origin stories), it’s a really fresh reminder that some stories just do NOT need to be told.

Mystery is good sometimes, and sometimes not,” said Kindt. “Boba Fett is so great because you never really knew who that guy was, but Han and Luke are better for having a back-story and less mystery about them. Even Luke, who’s pretty straightforward for a character, had a great mysterious element to his past. So unless one of the characters in ‘MIND MGMT’ gets their own solo series, I don’t think you’ll ever know everything about all of them.

If that wasn’t enough, Patton Oswalt has a great bit reflecting the same sentiment (language kiddos!).

Truth be told, though, I’m far more ok with the telling of Wolverine: Origins than I am so far with Thanos Rising. The devil’s in the details, and so far the details of Thanos’s upbringing that would actually be interesting – his family dynamic with his brother, and sometime Avenger, Eros, the civilization of Titan, his relationship to cosmic entities like Kronos, etc – are way underwhelming.

This is the most damning part of Thanos Rising – Even once you accept the story being told, it’s still just a terrible story.

And while Aaron and Bianchi are both comic pros who can make anything they do passable reading, final splashes like the one I’m about to reveal undermine any credibility this story ever had.

Obviously this whole thing is very spoiler-y, but the below is particularly bad, so if you haven’t read #2 jump ship now.

It’s one thing to write a bad comic. And it’s another thing to completely whiff on what makes a character special. But to then compound that with basically torture-porn of the villains own mother?

Ugh.

Because of course she should be wearing her finest lingerie as Thanos makes some very important strides towards self-actualization.

As shock value, this is just an embarrassing play. There’s zero emotion attached to the scene, just an eye-roll and quick reach for the newest issue of Hawkeye.

The horrible truth here, though, is that I’m going to continue buying Thanos Rising in the hopes that in the next issue Jason Aaron and Simone Bianchi will actually start telling Thanos stories.

This – whatever Thanos Rising #1 & #2 aims to be – is NOT a Thanos story. This immensely human, formulaic character is NOT Thanos! I refuse to accept this as canon, as origin, as much of anything other than a misguided lead-in to Marvel Now’s pending Infinity event.

Issue #3 offers the real test. So far this is the worst Thanos story I’ve ever read. Here’s to hoping that changes.

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About Dave

Dave is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Comic Book Herald, and also the Boss of assigning himself fancy titles. He’s a long-time comic book fan, and can be seen most evenings in Batman pajama pants. Contact Dave @comicbookherald on Twitter or via email at dave@comicbookherald.com.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Question, how did a cave collapse kill the young Eternals? I know that they’re kids, but even then they have superhuman durability, energy manipulation, super strength, and incredible resistance to the elements. Forget the fact that Thanos is a brooding Anakin Skywalker like teenager in this, there are some major inconsistencies in both the technological achievements of the Titan Eternals, as well as completely negating the fact that they are a race of super humans. There just seems to be a lack of creativity on the side of the illustrator. While the images are beautiful and well made, I was really hoping for some Kirby type art for Titan.

Regarding your question, the best answer I can come up with is that the Eternals of Titan aren’t quite the same as the Eternals of Earth. Mentor’s wife, Sui-san, was the last survivor of an offshoot of Eternals that sided with Uranos, who lost a civil war against his brother Chronos (from whom Ikaris and most of the Eternals we know are descended from). For reasons I’m not clear on, the Uranian Eternals never achieved the same level of power and abilities as those that remained on Earth. Because of this, Mentor’s children and their children did not inherit the full powers of their father… with the exception of Thanos. And he, of course, eventually exceeded them.

Very good review. I agree, something about Thanos Rising just didn’t feel right. What did you think of #3-#5?
I guess it boils down to this. While we did get hints of Thanos’s origin several different times, they were each a little different every time. These origin’s were all under Starlin’s pen too. Meaning that his past is meant to be shrouded in mystery. I feel this is done to emphasis that we, the audience, really has no idea of the inner workings of Thanos’s dark mind. I don’t think we are meant to find out how a living creature could fall in love with death and with upon the destruction of all there is. It’s madness. I feel that even Thanos may not know his true past as well as he thinks he does. He’s incredibly intelligent, ambitious, nihilistic, and cold/ indifferent to all things, and utterly and completely mad.

But when I read one first issues over Thanos, the death of his mother was still caused by himbut only this time, she was killed by Thano’s recently stolen space-ship bombing episode.

“With a small fleet, he dropped nuclear devices on his home world Titan, killing thousands of his people, including his mother Sui-San. Declaring himself ruler of Titan, he then set his sights on Earth.
Source:http://marvel.wikia.com/Thanos_(Earth-616)”

For someone who is just getting into comics and knows very little of the story behind Thanos, I’ve enjoyed reading “Thanos rising”. The Mad Titan,what drove him mad? This series seems to tell you in detail how he became the character you love. It doesn’t change the fact that he (in your words) becomes one of the greatest marvel villains of all time. Although, I understand what your’e saying. It’s not the character you are used to reading about, I for one enjoy the origin story. Just like I enjoy knowing how batman, spiderman, wolverine, Dr doom, and countless other marvel Characters came to be.

Rising isn’t great, but it’s definitely not the worst. Avengers: Celestial Quest was pretty foul, and his appearance in Thor #20-25ish was so bad it was retconned twice – once by Peter David and once by Starlin.

Finally got around to Thor #21-#25, and although it’s definitely not a standout, I find it a lot less problematic than Thanos Rising. Can see why Starlin wanted to retcon it, though. I’d wonder how he feels about Rising.

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[…] astronomical gods, Marvel’s Death can take any form it wants. According to a 2013 start story “Thanos Rising,” Death initial seemed to a immature Titan as a small girl, enlivening his nascent sociopathy. […]